A user/consumer may subscribe to different services like Data, VoIP, Video, P2P, etc. Each of these services may be charged differently, may receive different quality of service (QoS) treatment in the network and so on. A consumer/user's subscription or service level agreement (SLA) determines the treatment accorded to the consumer/user's traffic. For example, if a mobile user signs up for Data and Video service, then within a routing device the mobile user's traffic may forwarded to a ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) for traffic classification and/or to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds of packets that meet certain criteria for charging and QoS purposes.
Every time a subscriber signs up for a service, a set of related service rules is instantiated into a TCAM so that the service traffic can be segregated for charging and QoS purposes.